Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In rising to speak on this MPI, I started to choke on some of the uninformed drivel that was coming from the other side. I was particularly concerned by a couple of speakers who made light of the fact that they are going to have to walk some distance to reach Commonwealth waters. What they do not acknowledge is the fact that most of the inshore waters of these affected areas, particularly in the Coral Sea, have already been shut down. The fishermen who worked in those areas have already been forced out into the Coral Sea to continue their operations and we are now looking at shutting down those operations as well. It just shows you how uninformed those individuals on the other side are in relation to this issue.

About 25 per cent of Australia's coastal waters is already marine park. With about 25 per cent of our fishing area—the Coral Sea and other planned extensions—our marine park areas will comprise about 50 per cent of the global total. Australia has the largest per capita fishing zone and the lowest harvest rates in the world, at about one-thirtieth of the global average. We have the most restrictive and costly marine resource management in the world. Over 70 per cent of our seafood is imported, at a cost of $1.2 billion a year, from markets such as Thailand and Vietnam, where species are far more exploited. We are ripping the guts out of Third World countries. Through our own insatiable demand we are destroying their fisheries. We have done the same thing with forestry. These are the countries that can least afford to destroy their fisheries—and we are making sure that they do, while we lock up ours in their entirety. It is estimated that Australia will need to import 850,000 tonnes by 2020 to satisfy the growing consumption rate and dietary recommendations.

The Coral Sea is one of the world's prime tuna fishing grounds. The estimated value of its production has been reduced to about $8 million from 500 tonnes of tuna. That is what we are down to in this area that we are going to protect. Previously, Japanese fishermen who fished this area since the 1970s had sustainably produced around 30,000 tonnes annually for many, many years. Meanwhile Papua New Guinea licenses Asian fishing companies to fish the same migratory stocks—exactly the same fish—in its 2.4 million square kilometres of EEZ waters. In 2009 PNG took around 400,000 tonnes. In 2010 it grew to 700,000 tonnes—more than five times Australia's total catch of edible fish of all species combined. And PNG is expected to hit one million tonnes in 2011.

Meanwhile, because of all our restrictions and lock-ups, our national fishery only produces about 15,000 tonnes a year. Annual catches in the main commercially fished tuna species of skipjack, yellowfin, bigeye and albacore in the central and western Pacific area have increased continuously in recent decades, peaking in 2009 with the highest ever catch of 2.46 million tonnes recorded which was valued at $4.5 billion. This compares to the 15,000 tonnes that we are allowed to take nationally because of our restrictions. Yet Australia imports more canned tuna than any other seafood product—about $165 million worth. We save our fish so that all of these foreign fishermen—licensed by the PNG government in many cases—can catch them and sell them back to us. This is the intelligence of the mob that sits across from us!

Let us talk about the organisation that captured the minister and this mob over here and decided they would influence the change. It is called Pew. It was founded in 1948 by the Pew family, who made a fortune in oil and gas and have more than $5 billion in assets. Their company is known as Sunoco. It is one of the largest gasoline distribution companies in the United States, but it withdrew from the oil business in 2011. It made a squillion and decided to go out and create some mischief. So what did they do? They tried to become a false prophet. They claim to be an independent, non-profit, non-governmental, non-partisan and non-ideological organisation. How much of a joke is that!

They have got a conservation arm called the Pew Environment Group that literally owns this Labor government and certainly owns the minister. They say they are focusing on reducing what they see as the destruction of the world's oceans. They did not have the guts to take on the Americans. They will not go anywhere near the South-East Asian or European fisheries that already are absolutely trashed. No. They look around for the lowest common denominator. They look around for one of the only governments that is totally dependent on the Greens to survive. So they worm their way in here like the expanding gangrene that they are. They come in here and do a deal with this mob. They frighten the living hell out of them. They say, 'If you don't do a deal with us, the Greens will take away their support.' So this has nothing to do with the environment. It is all about politics. It is an absolute joke. They said 487,000 signatures came through in this email campaign—all nice, glossy ones. But 99.8 per cent of those submissions were bulk emails, and Senate estimates recently revealed that a very significant majority were from overseas. They did not even have a clue where this place was. It was just, 'Do you love your mother? Yes. Do you want to save the Coral Sea? Yes.' That is the way they do this, and it is an absolute farce. Whatever happened to Australians having a say in the management of their own waters?

Pew has a controversial history. In Canada it was accused of smothering grassroots environmental movements. It comes in with its six-figure salaries and the foundation funding, and it uses its influence to exercise control over whatever issues are brought up—the same as has happened here; exercising control over this mob over on the other side, who cannot survive without the Greens. Last month the Pew Trust made headlines by contributing funding to the cash-strapped Barnes Foundation, which looks after the famed Barnes art collection. Despite the donor's will specifying that the collection must stay in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, Pew helped fund lawyers who fought for the collection's relocation, in violation of the will. It has been reported over there as 'the art theft of the century'.

This is the grubby mob that these guys have decided to take exclusive advice from to destroy the livelihoods of so many people in our area. Bob Lamason of Great Barrier Reef Marine Tuna, who is the only one left up there, used to pay $2,000 a vessel back in 2000 for his six boats, catching about 1,200 tonnes of tuna a year. He is now paying $160,000 a year, an average of over $50,000 per vessel, and he is now only able to catch 500 tonnes of tuna. Back then there were no bycatch restrictions, no wire traces and no VMS, and he had a much wider range. But he faced much higher fuel costs in going further and further out as they pushed him out, and they put five-hook limits et cetera on him. Basically they are driving him out of business. Lyle Squire Junior, a third-generation businessman at Cairns Marine Aquarium, was decimated back when the green zones came out. They pushed him out into the Coral Sea. We look like losing him as well over this.

Minister Burke himself admitted that the scale of the lockup in the temperate zone—because it was so small—was pay-off for the lockup in the Coral Sea. In his speech here he mentioned some fisherman from the south-east saying that he was happy with it, as did the previous speaker. Of course they were, because they traded all of them off. They are not affected by it. The same goes for Chris Makepeace, the Northern Territory recreational fisherman that he mentioned. Of course, he is not affected either. The minister did mention Col McKenzie, the CEO of AMPTO. What he did not mention is that Col McKenzie is also the campaign manager for the state Labor members up in Cairns—a long-term Labor Party member.

The minister did a deal with the dive industry to divide them from the others in the hope that he might get their support. There is a bit of a problem with that, because he is now saying that they are the ones that are going to be managing the fishery; they are going to be the policemen. But Chris Eade, the president of the Cod Hole and Ribbon Reef Mooring Holders Association, which represents nine dive businesses, has already shot down the idea of the minister. He said:

… I don't think you can expect us to be your policemen out there … I cannot expect the crews on my boats, who are civilians, to put themselves at risk. They work for me, not the Government.

This is an absolute disgrace. We have already seen businesses starting to fold on this, and there is a hell of a lot more tragedy to come out of it. (Time expired)

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